Icardi misses penalty as In­ter loses 2-1 to Cagliari

In­ter Mi­lan cap­tain Mauro Icardi can do no right, it seems, and yes­ter­day added a missed a penalty to his woes as his side was beaten 2-1 by Cagliari.

Icardi had had a fan­tas­tic start to the sea­son, with six goals in seven matches, but an­gered the In­ter ul­tras with com­ments in his au­to­bi­og­ra­phy, which the fans called “lies” in a lengthy state­ment.

The Ar­gentina for­ward at­tempted to pla­cate the fans with a state­ment of his own on so­cial me­dia but he was jeered as he walked out ahead of the match, and was greeted by in­sult­ing ban­ners about him in the San Siro.

In­ter Vice-Pres­i­dent and club le­gend Javier Zanetti said the club would take ac­tion and hinted it could even strip Icardi of the cap­taincy.

In­ter fans even cheered af­ter Icardi sent his penalty woe­fully wide of the right post in the 26th minute af­ter he had been pushed over by Bruno Alves.

Joao Mario gave In­ter the lead 10 min­utes af­ter half­time, find­ing Ivan Perisic and then racing into the box to col­lect the re­turn pass. Cagliari goal­keeper Marco Storari saved his ini­tial ef­fort but Joao Mario tapped in the re­bound.

How­ever, Fed­erico Mel­chiorri lev­elled in the 71st and had a hand in the sec­ond, five min­utes from time, as his de­flected cross was turned in by In­ter goal­keeper Samir Han­danovic.

Mel­chiorri has now scored two goals in his only two Serie A matches af­ter a dif­fi­cult few years that saw him un­dergo brain surgery and also re­turn from a se­ri­ous knee in­jury.

Cagliari, which won the sec­ond di­vi­sion last sea­son, moved above In­ter into sev­enth spot.

LAZIO 1 BOLOGNA 1

Lazio could have moved sec­ond in Serie A, in­stead it needed a con­tro­ver­sial last-gasp penalty to res­cue a point against Bologna.

Bologna took the lead in the 10th minute when Si­mone Verdi whipped in a free kick from the right flank and Filip He­lander stretched out a leg to poke it past Fed­erico Marchetti at the far post.

Lazio, which also hit the wood­work, thought it had lev­elled in the 69th but goalline tech­nol­ogy showed the ball had not crossed the line - spar­ing the blushes of Erick Pul­gar, whose back­pass set up the chance.

The cap­i­tal club did level in the sixth minute of stop­page time when Ciro Im­mo­bile con­verted from the spot with the last kick of the game.